Dopamine - Average, Based on 4 Critics

Rolling Stone - 60Based on rating 3/5

60

Five albums and 18 years down the road from "Semi-Charmed Life," Third Eye Blind frontman Stephan Jenkins still rocks the same springy sing-rap, and he's still got a knack for spinning sunshine out of moody tunes — "Everything Is Easy" and "Back to Zero" reimagine the Cure and Arcade Fire as radio gold, and "Rites of Passage" kicks references to Occupy and Bowie over a bounce Chandler Bing could get down to. Jenkins' Nineties irony rages forth on "Get Me Out of Here," about a rocker whose fantasy is reaching its expiration date. But there's enough hooky music here to suggest Jenkins is hellbent on making sure that won't happen to him.

Six years is a long time between albums, so it's not surprising Third Eye Blind changed between the release of 2009's Ursa Major and 2015's Dopamine. The biggest change was the contentious departure of guitarist Tony Fredianelli, a mainstay in TEB since he replaced founding member Kevin Cadogan in 2000, a move that reinforces how Third Eye Blind is very much the Stephan Jenkins show. Dopamine pushes Jenkins' emotional bloodletting to the forefront, drawing explicit connections to such early, earnest hits as "Jumper." Much of the album marches to these strident strums with the band choosing to prioritize drama over hooks, providing an appropriate-enough setting for Jenkins' cloistered, claustrophobic confessions.

These days, San Francisco is a good place to look for ghosts. Some might be hiding in the fog that rolls across the Sunset in the morning; others in the storefronts making way for condos in the soon-to-be-barely-recognizable Mission. If all else fails, head straight for the skull of longtime resident Stephan Jenkins, whose latest output as the frontman and ringleader of Third Eye Blind feels as much like an exorcism as it does an album.

First album in six years from 90s bestselling San Fran band. Third Eye Blind had their time in the 1990s, when they sold in the multimillions, before being dropped by Warners and suffering some acrimonious line-up changes..